Of course to release a filler product like the interlude, and probably delaying several months the real update, doesn't contribute to make Zoey a favorite character, but it's not only that.
The presentation that DPC has done of her is not the best for starting liking a character. She's a brat that leaves her mother in a bad moment for her (her mother has just died), and breaks MC's heart for no good reason. Wanting to live by the beach like if it were holydays all year is a naïve and frivolous reason to leave everything behind. And the things that happens to her during her time in San Diego are boring. The characters that she finds there are cliché and uninteresting, and the things that happens to her once she leaves the MC are boring. Even herself bores of that living at the end and returns home.
Also, her personality seems to be the blue hair and the tattoos. She want's "to be herself", "to be unique", "to be special" and what she does? To follow an stupid trend... She was a frivolous brat before the tattoos, and now is a frivolous brat with tattoos. And she left for around a year, and apparently she's waiting to find it all as she left it, including the MC... She's delusional too. Those are not attractive traits for a character and DPC should know that. If the player is older of 20, will find Zoey's personality superficial and childish. Probably realistic, most people of Zoey's age are superficial and childish (and way, way older nowadays), but it doesn't make her an attractive Li, if you are asking to a character something more that the possibility of seeing some renders of her sitting in the face of Josy, for a quick fap.